Cellular therapy against public neoantigens.

Neoantigen-targeted therapies have typically been based upon personalized neoantigen-specific vaccines; however, in this issue of JCI, van der Lee et al. describe the development of a potential cellular immunotherapy targeting a "public" neoantigen derived from nucleophosmin 1 (NPM1), which is mutated in approximately 30% of acute myeloid leukemias (AMLs). The authors use reverse immunology to predict, and biochemically confirm, NPM1-derived neoepitopes (ΔNPM1) and then generate high-avidity T cell clones and retrovirally transduced T cell populations that kill NPM1-mutated AML. This study provides a general approach to adoptive cellular therapy that can be applied to targeting other tumors with public neoantigens.